In the second half of the 19th century thematic maps started to appear in school atlases, and became the dominant kind of map in these atlases in the second half of the 20th century. The career of the thematic school wall map is less impressive. Only a small number of these maps were published, mainly in the 20th century, and usually without much commercial success [1]. Most school wall maps were and are still general maps or chorographic maps.

The number of published thematic school wall maps of the Dutch East and West Indies is small. They contain mainly economic or cultural themes. The economic themes are almost always depicted in auxiliary maps. The map extract in Figure 5 shows as an example the auxiliary map ‘Java Productenkaart’, which is part of the ‘Wandkaart van Nederl.-Oost-Indië’ by W. van Gelder and C. Lekkerkerker (1928). Several symbol types are used to indicate 14 products of Java:
-3 area colours;
-7 letter symbols (the initial of the name of the product);
-2 geometric symbols;
-2 pictorial symbols (for example a small grid to indicate salt pans).
Although the first edition of this wall map was published in 1881, the two economic auxiliary maps were inserted only about 1920 in a later edition under influence of the rise of economic geography. Considering the ever growing importance of economics in school geography, it seems somewhat surprising that these auxiliary maps were omitted in the ninth edition (1939). However, the insight that auxiliary maps, often unreadable at a distance, are in general out of place on a wall map also gradually emerged.
 



School wall maps of the Dutch East Indies with cultural themes usually have the Protestant or Catholic mission work as the map subject. Occasionally only the working area of one specific missionary society is depicted, but more often the allocation of the working areas of all missionary societies in the Dutch East Indies is mapped by using area colours (for example see Figure 6). As a result of the large number of these societies, and hence the large number of colours needed, hand colouring of these wall maps, with their small impression numbers, was still practised about 1910. When comparing several mission maps, it can be deduced that, especially in the areas outside Java, the complicated distribution of working areas was changing continuously, and never reached a stable situation.